Mitt Romney Versus Lyme Disease and Science

Just when it looked like Mitt Romney might ignore scientific issues this fall, he vowed, in a flyer he sent out last week, to “get control” of the “massive epidemic” of chronic Lyme disease “wreaking havoc” on the residents of northern Virginia. This would be pretty good news if there was something called chronic Lyme disease, and particularly heartening to any voter who lives in a region where the “epidemic” is “wreaking havoc.” But, according to the Infectious Disease Society of America, there is “no convincing biological evidence’’ of any such condition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concurs. Worse, the flyer advocates responding to the disease with “aggressive antibiotics.” But in several recent studies, people with lasting complications of Lyme disease who received antibiotics for an extended period fared no better than those who received placebos. The type of “aggressive antibiotics” that Romney mentioned in the flyer, delivered by intravenous infusion for many weeks at a time, can actually kill people.

Before anyone concludes that I don’t recognize the danger posed by Lyme disease, I should point out that I am writing this blog post from Columbia County, New York, which is the county with the highest incidence of Lyme disease in the nation. Last year, the entire state of Virginia reported about one-fifth as many cases as we have in this county alone. If left untreated, Lyme disease can be crippling, yet it is a difficult illness to contract: a tick needs to attach itself to your body for at least twenty-four hours. Even then, two weeks worth of commonly prescribed antibiotics will kill the bacterium.

So how did Romney choose this non-epidemic of a non-illness as an issue? Well, there is a clue in his flyer: as President, he says, he would “provide local physicians with protection from lawsuits to ensure that they can treat the disease with the aggressive antibiotics that are required.” Two weeks ago Romney spoke with Michael Farris about Lyme. Farris is, among other things, a creationist who founded Patrick Henry College, and who says that his wife and all seven of their children suffer from “chronic” Lyme disease. The Washington Post has reported that Farris’s wife has received treatment from Dr. Joseph Jemsek. Dr. Jemsek moved his practice to Washington after being disciplined by the North Carolina Medical Board for treating patients with long-term antibiotics.* Farris seems to be the principal source of Romney’s knowledge on the topic.

When it comes to scientific literacy, this has not been a good year for the Republicans. Romney’s desire to get on top of this “epidemic” is not quite as ludicrous as Michele Bachmann’s stunning and completely groundless declaration, early in the primary campaign, that the vaccine for human papillomavirus caused mental retardation. But it’s not that far. In fact, there is a clear scientific issue that can only make Lyme disease worse—but it is a problem that Romney and the Republicans have ignored. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has noted that increasing temperature helps keep ticks alive. More ticks means more Lyme disease. This is a connection, as Mother Jones first noted, that Romney has failed to consider. Instead, he has said that spending huge sums trying to reduce CO2 emissions is “not the right course for us.”

Better, no doubt, to put our energy into an epidemic that the Centers for Disease Control—among many other scientific bodies—insists does not exist.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Dr. Jemsek had lost his medical license in North Carolina. He did not: in 2006, the North Carolina Medical Board issued a one-year suspension, which was stayed pending changes to his practice, and later, in 2008, issued a letter of concern about improper supervision of nurses who were treating Lyme-disease patients using a hyperbaric chamber.

Michael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998, and has written frequently about AIDS, T.B., and malaria in the developing world, as well as about agricultural biotechnology, avian influenza, the world’s diminishing freshwater resources, and synthetic biology.